


Salt

by museaway



Series: Tumblr Ficlets [7]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Baking, Canon Universe, Cas bakes, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Pie, baking mishaps, season 10, sugar and salt do look similar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-21 02:52:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3674715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/museaway/pseuds/museaway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas accidentally uses salt instead of sugar for the pie he makes, but Dean pretends it's delicious for Cas' sake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salt

**Author's Note:**

> **PROMPT:** Cas accidentally uses salt instead of sugar for the pie he makes, and Dean pretends it tasted delicious for Cas' sake, even though it's //gross//, until Cas tastes for himself and Cas gets touched that Dean tried to pretend to make him happy...? 
> 
> Originally posted to [Tumblr](http://www.museaway.com/post/113618372335/cas-accidentally-uses-salt-instead-of-sugar-for) for Pi(e) Day 2015. This includes parts 1 & 2.

The pie looked perfect: golden-brown flaky crust, hand-crimped edges. The top of the pie even had cut-outs in the shape of maple leaves, which Cas had etched with a toothpick to create the veins. The filling peeked out leaf-shaped windows, and Dean got a whiff of ground cloves. It smelled like childhood, like his mom’s kitchen, and stirred something in him: Cas just spent the last two hours cutting apples into precise slices, measuring sugar and spices like this was a ritual instead of a recipe, and he did it for Dean. Just for Dean.

He would have been fine with the store-bought variety with a limp crust, or one of those frozen ones—they bake up okay—but Cas said  _no_. He would make one from scratch. He wouldn’t even accept the refrigerated piecrust, insisted on making that too, and shooed Dean out of the kitchen. 

The top of the crust was glossy because Cas brushed it with an egg wash, beautiful like something out of a magazine.

"I’m gonna start calling you Martha," Dean teased as Cas took down two plates and scrounged through the drawers for a pie server.

"My name is Castiel," Cas corrected him with a smirk.

"Baker of the Lord," Dean added, pulling out a chair at the table.

Cas sliced into the pie. The first piece fell apart—”It always does that,” Dean assured him—but Cas took that one anyway, and cut Dean a second slice, which he presented with a fork positioned artfully beside it. He set the plate on the table in front of him.

"You’re something else, man," Dean said with a grin, shaking his head. He picked up the fork and cut off a generous bite while Cas watched, slid it into his mouth, and nearly gagged.

It was about the saltiest thing Dean had ever tasted, like water from the Dead Sea, which he knew for a fact because of that unfortunate time he sipped from the wrong flask. He wanted to spit it out, but he couldn’t, not with Cas looking at him like that, his eyes huge and earnest, his expression so  _adoring_  that Dean forced his eyes wide to keep them from watering, and swallowed through a smile.

"Is it good?" Cas asked. 

When Dean croaked, “Never had anything like it,” Cas’s answering smile was resplendent. He curved a hand around Dean’s cheek and leaned down to kiss him, and it was worth eating a mouthful of salt for that kiss, for the look on Cas’s face that Dean had put there.

He let Cas kiss him for a while, step between his knees and hold Dean’s face. He laid the fork down and rested his hands on Cas’s hips, brushed both thumbs against his skin. But when Cas licked into his mouth, he made a funny noise and stepped back, smacking his lips together, touching his fingers to them. He looked at Dean and then at the pie, then the kitchen counter behind him.

"I confused the salt and sugar," he muttered.

"Yup," Dean said sheepishly.

"You lied," Cas accused, looking back at him. 

"No," Dean corrected. "I said I never had pie like that before," but Cas deflated. He sat in the chair next to Dean and folded his hands on the table, frowning.

Dean scooted his chair closer and put a hand on Cas’s knee.

"No one’s baked me a pie like that since my mom," he said, but it was enough for Cas to meet his eyes.

"I want to make you happy," Cas murmured, which Dean decided meant  _I love you_.

"It’s a damn good looking pie," he said in response, which was his way of saying  _I love you too_.

Cas chuckled.

"What should we do with it?" he asked, running his fingers over the back of Dean’s hands.

"Use it to ward off demons," Dean suggested, trailing his knuckles over Cas’s jaw. "Or leave it on the counter, let Sammy find it."

"That’s mean," Cas pointed out. 

"That’s  _hilarious_ ,” Dean said. He leaned in to kiss Cas again. “Thanks for the pie.”

Castiel smiled against his mouth.

+

The second pie was better; the third and fourth so good, Sam joked that Cas should open a bakery. After the fifth successful apple pie attempt, Cas started researching pie recipes on the internet and even made something called a Pinterest board that he tended to with his phone. (“It’s an app, Dean.”) 

After that, Cas’s pie obsession grew out of control. He ordered it everywhere they went, taking notes on the crust and the consistency of the filling on the back of napkins. At the drugstore, Dean got him a small notebook with a cat on the cover, and you would’ve thought he just handed Cas the moon. He carried it in his coat along with his FBI badge and jotted down interesting flavor combinations when they hit him, which was typically at inconvenient times, such as in the middle of the night or while they were barreling down the interstate at 80 miles an hour, Cas digging through the glove compartment for a pen.

Dean got him a pen next, one of those nice gel types with black ink. 

The bunker’s television switched from nature shows to cooking shows. Within a week, Dean had every cooking channel memorized. He’d sit with Cas’s feet on his lap after a few days on the road, absently rub his ankles and calves, and act as Cas’s personal remote control.

“Why can’t you do this yourself?” he’d ask, to which Cas always replied, “I like when you do it for me.” And then he’d smile and Dean would change the channel.

It meant pie, dozens and dozens of them: apple cranberry and pecan, cherry with almond extract—Cas even went through a pudding pie phase, which Dean appreciated at three in the morning when Cas kicked him awake (because while adorable when he was bed-tousled and groggy, Cas was a restless sleeper and the worst cover hog ever).

But this…

Objectively, he understood the request, but the idea was just…well, it was disgusting, but Cas was insistent. He had read about it online, on a very reputable website, he said, and Dean was to bring it back for him from the grocery store. He stared at the white box in his hand. 

Lard. Freaking lard. Dean was  _not_  putting this in his body. 

He was a warrior. He was not eating frigging pig fat (Sam pointed out the hypocrisy over a plate of bacon), not even when the pie Cas made with it came out of the oven, possibly the best looking pie Dean had ever seen, fragrant with spices, pure ambrosia, but a man had to have standards. His mouth watered as it cooled, and it watered when Cas cut two slices—one for himself and one for Sam—and they sat at the table. Well, that was fine, because Dean wasn’t eating any, even if Sammy did moan like a damn porn star around the first bite.

“Cas,” Sam said. “Man, that’s your best one yet. Dean, you gotta try this.”

“I’m good,” Dean said, though his interest was piqued, but he couldn’t backtrack now, not after he’d taken a stand against eating the damned pie in the first place. Who cared if it smelled amazing and Sammy was going in for a second piece? No. It was just pie, and Cas would make a normal one next time.

Except he didn’t. The lard stayed in the pie, and the pie stayed out of Dean Winchester. It was a cruel joke the world was playing. When they’d return from a case, Cas would bake a pie for himself and Sam, and Dean buried his disappointment in a pack of stale Oreos. 

* * *

On a rainy Tuesday night, Cas kicked him hard enough that it ached for a couple minutes. Dean rested his face between Cas’s shoulder blades as he waited for it to fade, kissed Cas’s back and his neck, nuzzled up against him. Cas didn’t wake, just muttered something into his pillow. Dean’s stomach growled, so he laughed, kissed Cas’s hair, and got up for something to eat.

The pie sat on the counter, mocking him as he walked into the kitchen.

Dean gave it a dark look.

The pie stared back in challenge.

The standoff continued for the better part of a minute, with the pie gaining a significant edge.

“Fine,” Dean hissed and stabbed it with a fork.

It was a tactical mistake. The pie was fantastic. There was no way he was eating just one bite, not when it tasted like this. He took back everything he’d ever said against lard. Cas would never notice if a slice was missing, so he served himself a sliver and ate it next to the sink. Then he cut another, and another, until there was more pie in his stomach than the dish. Maybe Cas and Sam would blame each other. He hastily covered the remains with plastic wrap and went back to bed, startled when he bumped into Cas in the doorway.

“Hey,” he said, dropping his hands to Cas’s bare waist. 

“I was coming to find you,” Cas said, rubbing his eyes. His voice was endearingly rough. 

“I was hungry,” Dean said.

“What did you eat?”

Dean hesitated just a moment too long. Cas’s mouth curved into a lazy smile as he tilted his head up and kissed Dean. The bastard licked pie filling from his lips. 

“Were you going to tell me?” he asked.

“No,” Dean answered, which made Cas laugh. He grabbed fistfuls of Dean’s t-shirt and dragged him back to bed. 

“That wasn’t very nice,” Cas said, spreading Dean on his back and settling over him, kissing his neck as he held down Dean’s wrists. 

“You’d probably better punish me,” Dean murmured, arching up into him.

“I’m planning on it,” Cas hummed against his throat, kissing all the way to Dean’s ear, grinding his hips slowly as he murmured, “Tomorrow, I’m baking a cake.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to [Tumblr](http://www.museaway.com/post/113618372335/cas-accidentally-uses-salt-instead-of-sugar-for)


End file.
